Building a Culture of Student Voice: WSU The College's Strategy to Enhance SFS Engagement

By Christopher Roffey

In 2025, The College developed an SFS strategy to increase student response rates. The strategy was a success, lifting response rates from 6% in 2024 to 28% in 2025, and it continues to rise. The key to their success was not in any single intervention, but in a series of actions connected by one shared value and purpose: capturing and responding to student voice.

The College had been concerned about declining response rates to Student Feedback on Subject (SFS) Surveys prior to 2025. Across The College's programs, annual response rates had fallen progressively and consistently, from 14% in 2021 to just 6% in 2024. This decline was concerning because fewer student survey responses meant fewer opportunities to understand their experiences and reduced the evidence base for continuous improvement of teaching and learning.

The issue became more pressing with the introduction of modular programs in 2025. With the launch of modular delivery, students and staff experienced a substantially different learning environment. Subjects were re-imagined and re-designed for 4-week delivery, employing a flipped curriculum modality, with highly interactive and immersive learning experiences, diverse assessments and ongoing feedback practices. We knew College students, many of whom are new to tertiary learning environments, would bring different backgrounds, expectations and learning practices to the new model.

As we began this transition, student voice was critical to understanding how the new model was being experienced and where refinements were needed. Student voice was therefore central to understanding whether the changes we were making were achieving their intended purpose.

In response, The College's Academic Pathway Programs developed an SFS strategy in early 2025, with a target of increasing SFS response rates by 15 percentage points. The target gave us a clear measure against which to assess our progress. The initial results were encouraging. Following implementation of the strategy, the SFS response rate increased to 42.4% in Autumn Block 1, 2025. Importantly, the improvement was not confined to that initial block. Across 2025, the overall SFS response rate was 28% and in 2026 we have so far maintained an overall response rate of 30%.

We have been careful not to attribute this improvement to any single intervention. The strategy consisted of a range of connected actions and has continued to evolve. What the early result did give us was confidence that a deliberate and coordinated approach could make a substantial difference.

The strategy itself was devised and led by the Academic Pathway Programs leadership team at The College but, most crucially, developed through consultation with Program Coordinators and Subject Coordinators. Its implementation also depended heavily on teaching teams, Student Success Coaches, and colleagues in the University's Competitive Intelligence and Analytics team, now part of the Data Office.

Start with purpose

The College's first step in 2025 was to clarify why SFS mattered and what we were asking students to contribute. We saw student feedback as an important source of evidence for understanding what was working, what needed adjustment and how we could continue improving learning through our transition to modular delivery.

We then translated this purpose into short, student-friendly videos explaining why student voice mattered and how feedback could lead to change. Teaching staff reinforced this in class, showing the videos and taking time to answer students' questions about the SFS process. This approach was consistent with research highlighting the importance of clearly communicating the purpose of web-based surveys and encouraging meaningful participation (Bennett & Nair, 2010).

This built on the face-to-face connections already being established between students and teachers throughout each block. In a focused four-week learning environment, these relationships and students' sense of connection to their class, program and institution were important parts of the learning experience. They also provided a natural context for students to see SFS as part of an ongoing conversation about their learning, rather than something separate from it. Indeed, research from within Western Sydney University has previously highlighted the relationship between students' engagement with institutional surveys and their academic and peer connections (Possamai, Possamai-Inesedy, Corpuz & Greenaway, 2023).

Build shared ownership

The strategy had strong institutional backing, but its success depended on shared ownership across Academic Pathway Programs at The College. We established a 60 per cent response-rate goal for programs and incorporated this into teaching staff’s key objectives for 2025, providing a common focus for our efforts.

Program Coordinators and Subject Coordinators were central to shaping how the strategy was understood and applied within their programs and subjects. Teachers brought it to life through their conversations with students, particularly by explaining why their feedback mattered and sharing examples of how previous feedback had informed change.

This collective approach helped position SFS as part of a shared commitment to improving the student experience, rather than as an additional administrative task.

Close the loop

This became one of the strongest elements of The College's approach. Program Coordinators began visiting classes towards the end of blocks to discuss SFS and provide examples of changes informed by previous student feedback, including changes to assessment, learning resources, subject delivery and curriculum.

We were not suggesting that every piece of feedback would result in a specific change. Rather, we wanted students to understand that their perspectives formed part of the evidence we considered when reviewing and refining our practice.

This introduced an important sense of reciprocity into the process. We were asking students to invest in the process, and we needed to demonstrate that we were listening and responding.

In this sense, closing the loop is not simply about showing that a suggestion has been implemented. It is about making visible how student perspectives contribute to professional and academic decision-making, reflecting research highlighting the value of systematically using student feedback to identify areas for improvement and enhance the student experience (Grebennikov & Shah, 2013).

Make participation easy

We also worked with colleagues in what was previously the Competitive Intelligence and Analytics team to better understand survey release dates, how students received the survey and what they needed to identify in their communications.

This allowed us to refine timing and communication and provide teaching teams with clearer information to share with students.

The four-week block also provided an opportunity to think carefully about when SFS communication would be most useful. With learning, assessment and feedback progressing through a focused cycle, we worked to align SFS communication with that rhythm, ensuring students knew when the survey was available, how to access it and why their contribution mattered.

Bring it into the classroom

One of The College's clearest lessons has been the value of embedding SFS participation within class time.

Historically, students have always been given time in their final class to complete surveys. However, in the previous delivery mode, attendance was very low by the end of a teaching session. In modular delivery, attendance is high for the final week and this strategy has more impact. To further encourage participation, teaching staff display the survey email subject line, remind students to complete both the SFS and SFT surveys, explain the importance of student feedback, and highlight changes that have resulted from previous survey responses. Staff then briefly step out of the classroom while students complete the surveys.

Our experience suggests that classes with strong attendance, particularly those including in-class assessment, provide ideal opportunities for survey completion. Announcements and reminders can then reinforce participation.

Keep the momentum going

During each block, we share rolling response-rate updates and a leaderboard with Program Coordinators and Subject Coordinators. This gives programs a real-time view of progress, allowing them to adjust approaches and share effective practices while surveys remain open.

In addition, we have added some friendly competition, with the highest-performing program in terms of response rates recognised through a celebratory event at the end of each semester for both students and academic/support staff (often involving pizza). Finally, Student Success Coaches reinforce the value of SFS through their mentoring conversations with students.

Together, these approaches keep student voice visible and help build collective ownership of the process.

What we have learned

The College has seen substantial growth in SFS response rates since 2024. However, we are careful not to attribute this improvement to any single intervention. The strategy continues to evolve, and considerable variation remains between subjects, programs and cohorts.

For colleagues seeking to strengthen SFS participation, The College experience suggests several principles:

1. establish a clear purpose with students and teachers;
2. demonstrate to students how feedback informs change;
3. make responsibility collective;
4. reduce practical barriers;
5. provide dedicated opportunities for completion;
6. monitor participation while surveys are open; and
7. encourage subjects and programs to adapt approaches to their particular students and contexts.

Most importantly, we recommend that colleagues resist making the response rate the purpose of the exercise.

We began this work because declining participation meant losing an important source of student voice when we needed it most. The subsequent growth in response rates is encouraging, but the more significant development is the stronger culture around listening and responding.

For Academic Pathway Programs at The College, student feedback has become part of how we navigate modular learning together. Students contribute their experiences and perspectives, while staff listen, reflect and respond. The SFS is ultimately only a mechanism. Its value lies in the exchange it enables: students sharing their experiences, staff listening and responding, and both contributing to ongoing improvement. This reflects the principles of reciprocity and shared responsibility that underpin our pedagogy and teaching practice (Healey, Flint & Harrington, 2014).

References

Bennett, L., & Nair, C. S. (2010). A recipe for effective participation rates for web-based surveys. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(4), 357–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930802687752

Grebennikov, L., & Shah, M. (2013). Student voice: Using qualitative feedback from students to enhance their university experience. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(6), 606–618. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2013.774353

Healey, M., Flint, A., & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. Higher Education Academy.

Possamai, A., Possamai-Inesedy, A., Corpuz, G., & Greenaway, E. (2024). Got sick of surveys or lack of social capital? An investigation on the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on institutional surveying. The Australian Educational Researcher, 51(1), 21–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00569-6